by J. T. Edson
“It would’ve been a nice one with a good tickle by all accounts if they hadn’t made it a topping job by killing them two,” Higgins had stated, knowing what was meant by the name of the hotel. “I ’aven’t ’eard much, so what happened?”
“Well, English, how was it done?” Belle asked after she had answered the question. Guessing that “tickle” referred to the amount of the loot and “topping job” meant that the two murders had turned the robbery into a capital offense for which hanging would be the punishment, she had had no need to request an explanation. Instead, she gave all the information she had acquired. She did not forget to include the significant summation supplied by the hotel’s doctor—who was summoned and showed what might have been surprising perception if he had not said he served in the Medical Department of the United States Army during the War and had had considerable experience where such matters were concerned—that the shed blood and condition of the bodies suggested they had been killed almost simultaneously. What was more, he had found nothing to indicate either had been allowed to struggle before the death blow with a knife in each case was inflicted. “The only door into the suite was locked and the key still on the inside, and everything else points to them having come through from the balcony from the French windows, both of which you and I know aren’t too difficult to arrange.”
“That it’s not,” the Englishman agreed. “Only, from what I know about the way things are done at the Republic, getting up to the suite wouldn’t be easy by the stairs, much less riding the elevator. I don’t see whoever done it hanging around fixing the French windows or the front door when they were taking stoppo, especially after what they’d done.”
“I agree with you that there had to be more than one of them involved,” Belle asserted, even though Higgins had not stated the point in so many words.
“I can’t see them even getting to the floor without the hotel guards spotting them,” the Rebel Spy claimed. “Unless they had inside help.”
“They’d’ve needed to be a bloody sight luckier than m—anybody I know—if they managed to find somebody they could straighten to look the other way while they was going through. It’s been tried more than once and never come off.”
“Then they must have climbed to the balcony.”
“Where’s this ’ere suite at?”
“On the front and second floor.”
“Then it wasn’t from the ground, if there’s more than one in on it, and I’d say there ’as to be,” Higgins assessed. “That just couldn’t be done even from the sides or the back. I know, it’s been thought of and given up by some fellers who’re as good as I used to be on the climb. Not that there’s many of ’em around, and certainly not working mobbed up nor even in twos.”
“Are you saying it couldn’t be done, even though it was?” Belle inquired.
“I’m saying there’s not more’n two over ’ere’s could’ve done it,” the Englishman corrected. “And neither of ’em’s working around town.”
“Only two?” the Rebel Spy queried.
“I’m surprised there’s even that bleeding many,” Higgins declared. “It’s mostly all running around wiv guns waving ’n’ masks over the face, or blowing things up wiv ’igh hex-plosives over here, no finny-essy like what the Frogs say at all.”
“From what I’ve heard, the Countess’s jewelry was worth a great deal of money,” Belle said. “Couldn’t somebody have come over from Europe who has the finesse to pull it off?”
“If anybody that good had come over, I’d’ve ’eard abart it,” the locksmith declared with conviction in his voice. “Do you know what I reckon, Miss Boyd?”
“I’ve always been willing to listen to your opinion on anything like this, English,” Belle said truthfully.
“Whoever done it must’ve found some way to sneak in,” Higgins explained, showing he was pleased by the compliment from one for whom he had developed a great respect and considered to have been his most promising pupil when giving her instruction in the finer points of committing a burglary. “Then they got up onto the balcony ’rahnd the roof and come dahn from there.”
“Would doing that be easy?”
“Sneaking in would be the heasiest part, and that’d be bloody ’ard, if you’ll pardon my French.”
“Could they have climbed down using ropes?” Belle suggested.
“They’d ’ave to be bloody good to do it going down,” Higgins estimated. “And even better than good to climb back again. That’d need something like a bleeding miracle, or a better-trained team than I’ve ever ’eard of. ‘Course, there’s allus new ’n’s coming up, but anybody that good would soon get talked abart. I tell you, Miss Boyd, ’ow it was done’s a bleeding mystery, and ’appen you solve it, I’d be obliged if you’d tell me ’ow it was done. I’d like to shake the ’ands of the team what did it, ’cepting I don’t like what they did to them two poor bleeders—and one of ’em a real pretty young woman—who must’ve walked in on ’em.”
“I know how you feel, English,” Belle admitted grimly. “Damn it, I’ve done some things I’m not proud of in my time in the line of duty and expect to have to again, but what they did was nothing but cold-blooded and deliberate murder. I don’t particularly care for the Countess, but I aim to bring whoever they were to justice if I can.”
“Do you know, Miss Boyd,” Higgins said pensively, “the more I think about it, the surer I get that they wasn’t professional villains what done it.”
“You mean that they could have been amateurs on their first robbery?” the Rebel Spy asked.
“That’d explain why I’ve never heard of ’em,” the Englishman pointed out. “The only thing I can’t work out is what kind of blokes could’ve done it.”
“Or me,” Belle admitted, realizing the amount of skill that would have been required to make the descent from the roof to the balcony on the second floor and then climb back.
Knowing better than to ask the names of the two men whom Higgins considered capable of climbing to the Countess’s suite, as he had always refused to divulge such information on the grounds that he “wasn’t no bleedin’ nark,” Belle thanked him for his help. They chatted for a few minutes about old times and mutual acquaintances from those days, then she took her departure. Absorbed in thoughts engendered by the conversation while going in search of transportation back to the hotel, she paid no attention to a large and glaringly printed poster attached to the wall of a building, although she might have drawn some significance from it if she had done so.
CIRCUS MAXIMUS PROUDLY PRESENTS
FOR ONE WEEK ONLY IN YOUR FAIR CITY
THE PREMIER ATTRACTIONS OF THE WORLD
SEE
THE GREAT ZOLTAN ASCEND IN HIS BALLOON CAPTAIN FEARLESS AND HIS FEROCIOUS LIONS AND TIGERS THE LOMBARDO BROTHERS, MASTERS OF THE HIGH TRAPEZE
GORGO THE GIGANTIC, STRONGEST MAN IN THE WORLD PRINCESS MAGDALENE, KNIFE THROWER AND QUICK-CHANGE
ARTIST
JINKS THE MASTER CLOWN AND HIS COMICAL COHORTS AND NUMEROUS OTHER ACTS TO ENTERTAIN AND
THRILL YOU
According to the date and other details given in smaller print, the circus was due to leave Washington, D.C., for a tour of the Kansas railroad towns and points west in three days’ time.
Five – Don’t Try to Pull That Old Game On Me!
“Good afternoon,” Libby Craddock greeted. “Are you Lachlan Lachlan of the McLachlans, like it says on the door?”
On reaching the balcony around the roof of the Grand Republic Hotel, the young woman and her associates had concealed the items used to bring off the robbery beneath garb in which they had traveled from the Circus Maximus. Then they had contrived to make their escape from the premises with no greater difficulty than was experienced on arriving and ascending to the roof. Collecting the other member of the party from where he had remained on watch in the street, they had returned to their temporary accommodation without attracting any unwanted attention.
The reddish-brunette was
now about to try to dispose of the loot.
Looking at the man who she had been informed by an acquaintance with criminal connection was the best chance of making the kind of deal she wanted, Libby was far too experienced to let herself be deterred by outer appearances. There was nothing impressive about the building in which she had been informed he could be located. Nor was his business accommodation suggestive of the kind of money she intended to demand for the jewelry she had helped to steal. It was composed of two offices, on the door of each being inscribed in white paint badly in need of renewing, “LACHLAN LACHLAN OF THE MCLACHLANS, Dealer In Antiques And Objets D’Art.” On one was the further information, “PRIVATE! Absolutely No Admittance” and the other bore the words “RECEPTION, KNOCK AND ENTER.”
Going through the second door after having complied with the first part of the instructions, the reddish-brunette had found herself in a small and grubby office that smelled of stale cigar smoke. She had been confronted by a small and wizened man with shifty pale-blue eyes in a face suggestive of a less-than-honest nature and which reminded her of dishonest jockeys she had known. On hearing her say she had been sent by Mr. Alastair McAdam of Glasgow, the password she was given by her associate, he had placed the thick and cheap cigar he was smoking in a stone tray holding the remains of several more and a pile of ash, which accounted for the less-than-pleasant aroma of his surroundings. Having gone through a door into the adjacent office, he had returned a few seconds later to say she could enter.
If Libby had found the other room unimpressive, she considered the one into which she had been directed was little better. Nothing about its furnishings—an ancient desk, a couple of chairs from which the stuffing was protruding, a stove in which a fire was burning regardless of the day being warm, and a scuttle filled with coal alongside it—or wall decorations implied that she was in the presence of the man her acquaintance had claimed was the most affluent fence for stolen property anywhere in the United States.
Rising from the chair at the opposite side of the desk to where the reddish-brunette was coming, as the door through which she was admitted was closed behind her to leave them alone, the man looked her over with the same interest she was devoting to him. There was, she decided, something theatrical about him. Just under six feet tall, he was almost skeletally lean and gaunt in build. His sharp, pallid features had the texture of old parchment and seemed just as lifeless in texture. They were not rendered any more pleasant by a pair of beady black eyes and a somewhat large hooked nose. Nor was his appearance improved by being topped with what her trained eyes detected was a wig of longish white hair. Finally, he was clad in far from expensive or new somber black attire that put her in mind of that worn by a “doom and damnation”—threatening circuit-riding preacher belonging to one of the lesser and stricter religious denominations.
For his part, the man seemed to find his visitor just as unprepossessing. That was, she realized, her own fault. Putting to use the ability learned from her father and exploited in the second part of her billing as “Princess Magdalene, Knife Thrower and Quick-Change Artist”—the poster advertising the Circus Maximus did not mention that she was also “Chieftainess Swift Eagle of the Mohawk Nation, Equestrian Marvel,” “Lady Lavina, Escapologist Nonpareil,” and “Daring Donna, Trick Shot Extraordinaire,” and in each capacity she was sufficiently proficient as to perform adequately when aided by judicious trickery for some of them, on various occasions—she had made sufficient changes to her appearance to feel sure he would be unable to recognize her if they met at some later date.
Sufficient of the wig Libby had on was deliberately made to straggle from beneath a grubby white spoon-bonnet to show it was an eye-catching red hue. By wearing horn-rimmed spectacles with darkened lenses, having added a most realistic if unflattering false nose, and with two of her front teeth blackened out, she had removed all traces of voluptuous attractiveness from her face. Including the much-worn buffalo-hide muff on her right hand and equally ancient-looking bulky brown bag in her left—in a black glove that concealed all trace of her marital status—her clothing was no better than would be worn by any woman in the lowish-rent district to which she had come. What was more, while the achievement was no mean feat, it was designed to prevent all signs of her body’s shapely feminine contours from showing. To complete the disguise, she walked without any of the seductive grace she could adopt when called for.
“That is my name,” the man admitted after a moment during which he and his visitor had scrutinized one another. His voice had a burr almost as pronounced as that used by entertainers seeking to establish that their origins are in Scotland. “And you, my clerk Beagle tells me, are a friend of Mr. Alastair McDonald of Glasgow, my old hometown and that of my clan.”
“His name’s ‘McAdam,’ as you know damned well,” Libby answered with a timber that was unidentifiable by any regional or local accent and totally unlike her usual sensually promising tone, or the more threatening one she adopted when annoyed by something. “So let’s forget being cagey and get down to business.”
“Before one talks business,” Lachlan answered, sinking onto the chair he had risen from with seeming reluctance when the reddish-brunette entered and waving to her from the opposite side of the desk, “one always prefers to know who one is doing it with.”
“If I told you my name was Mrs. Katy Smith,” Libby answered as she placed the bag on the scuffed top of the ancient desk but did not remove the muff, “I’d bet you the best pork dinner in town, if you go for that sort of grub, you wouldn’t believe me. And you’d be right not to, although I’m not going to tell you what it really is, so let’s get down to what’s brought me here.”
“I frequently eat pork, although I’m not interested in betting,” Lachlan said coldly. “Now, who are y—!”
“Are these introduction enough?” the reddish-brunette interrupted and tipped some of the loot acquired in the previous night’s robbery from the bag.
“Are they what I think they are?” the fence asked, staring with all-too-obvious interest at the pieces of jewelry that lay before him.
“They are,” Libby confirmed. “And the rest of the swag’s in here. Do you want to look it over and make me an offer, or sit swapping lies about our names and where we come from?”
“You are not what you seem, I suspect, Mrs. Katy Smith,” the fence challenged.
“No more than you are, Mr. Lachlan Lachlan of the McLachlans,” the reddish-brunette countered in a similarly mocking tone. “So let’s not start asking about true names and get down to business, or I’m walking straight out of here. You aren’t the only fence I can take them to.”
“What you’ve shown me is called being in possession of stolen property by the law,” Lachlan stated in a threatening fashion, and there was a slight bump as he laid his right forearm on top of the desk.
“And the law is the last thing you want coming here,” Libby pointed out. “So what is it to be, talk a deal or I go elsewhere?”
“I can’t talk business until after I’ve examined the merchandise to decide upon its value,” the fence warned, accepting that he was dealing with the gang of amateurs he—like Albert Higgins, unbeknownst to him—had deduced, from what he had already heard about the robbery at the Grand Republic Hotel, had carried it out and did not know how to handle the sale of the loot.
“Then examine to your heart’s content,” the reddish-brunette authorized calmly, tipping the remainder of the jewelry into view still without removing her other hand from its place of concealment.
Staring not without a certain amount of avarice showing at the glittering mound before him, Lachlan used his left hand to extract a jeweler’s lupe from the top drawer of his desk. However, he used both as he began to subject each piece in turn to it in a way that indicated to Libby he knew full well what he was doing, not that she had doubted such would prove the case. As he went on with the scrutiny, he frequently emitted grunts redolent of disappointment or uninterest and set aside one
of the larger pieces. By the time he had concluded the lengthy and thorough examination, they were in the majority and were kept separate from the lesser pile of smaller items.
“Well?” Libby prompted when a few seconds had elapsed without her receiving a comment of any kind.
“I don’t want to disappoint you, Mrs. Katy Smith, after the excellent piece of work you and your gang did last night,” Lachlan responded, contriving to sound more dourly Scottish than before as he gestured with his left hand at the smaller pile. “But this is all that’s of the slightest interest to me. All the rest are nothing but costume jewelry Countess Simonouski fetches with her to impress people, and I’ll bet the real stuff is back in Russia safe and sound somewhere. Genuine pieces that good are kept in either a vault at a bank or, in this case, the strong room at the Grand Republic.”
“Is that so?” the reddish-brunette asked, keeping any expression of how she felt over what she had been told from showing on her disguised features.
“You can believe me,” the fence asserted, his voice redolent with what passed as complete conviction. Taking a stack of well-used bank notes from the drawer that had yielded the lupe, he started to count some of them out while continuing, “But there, I can see you weren’t trying to put something over on me and it was all nothing more than a mistake on your part. Such often happens on one’s first job. Anyway, I don’t mind losing a few bucks against the time you come up with something really worthwhile, so here’s what I’m willing to do.”
“Is that all you’re willing to offer?” Libby inquired after she had been quoted a far-from-munificent price for the smaller pile of jewelry.
“It’s even a bit more than they’re worth,” Lachlan claimed with what seemed like sincerity. “The way they were got, they’re so hot it’ll be a long time before I dare try to get rid of them. And the same applies to the rest of it. Here, I’ll show you exactly what they’re worth.”
